Sticking Fingers Into Sockets EP

Arts & Crafts / Wichita; 2007

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Los Campesinos! aren't the first act to make a name for themselves on MySpace. They may, however, be one of the first guitar groups in the UK who really sound like products of Web 2.0. The artists they idolize-- Pavement, Broken Social Scene, Yo La Tengo, Deerhoof, Destroyer-- are bands feverishly championed in blogs and online zines (yes, including Pitchfork), not the latest batch of tabloid-friendly lads who only listen to Oasis or the Clash. "It's sad that you think that we're all just scenesters," Gareth Campesino! chimes in on MySpace hit "You! Me! Dancing!", then adds, "Even if we were, it's not the scene you're thinking." He's probably right.

As it usually goes in the MySpace era, most of the songs on the young septet's jangly debut EP may already be familiar to you. Produced by one of the band's heroes, Broken Social Scene's David Newfeld, Sticking Fingers Into Sockets includes: (1) debut single "We Throw Parties, You Throw Knives"; (2) flip-side "Don't Tell Me to Do the Math(s)"; (3) the second single, a re-recorded "You! Me! Dancing!"; (4) flip-side "It Started With a Mixx"; and (5) a cover of Watery, Domestic's "Frontwards" that has the contagious enthusiasm of a first-rate music blogger. The only track on the EP you couldn't (legally) hear for free right now until recently was 30-second throwaway "Clunk-Rewind-Clunk-Play-Clunk", but now even that's streaming. And two respected indie labels expect people to buy this disc.

You might even want to. Silly names aside, Los Campesinos! play superbly crafted indie pop that bounces off walls like Love Is All, grins with the childlike exuberance of Bis, and throws the toy chest into its arrangements like Architecture in Helsinki. Glockenspiels and pizzicato violin veer into reckless guitar riffs and full-bodied handclaps-- or fizz over, like Mentos and Coke, into happy-stupid crescendos. Gareth shares lead vocal duties with the similarly pseudonymous Aleksandra Campesino!, and their boy-girl exchanges give the music an extra, sweet frisson. Newfeld's treatment turns "You! Me! Dancing!" from a lo-fi rallying cry into an unstoppable force for converting spindly legs into dancefloor blurs.

Some music should not be enjoyed sitting down in front of a computer.

Beneath all the exclamation points, Los Campesinos! sneak in charming lyrics that range from the everyday to the absurd. In the tradition of mixtape songs since Bow Wow Wow's "C30, C60, C90, Go!", the band's "It Started With a Mixx" finds Gareth "trying to find the perfect match between pretentious and pop." While the Lesley Gore-referencing "We Throw Parties, You Throw Knives" could be anything from a political statement to another assault against lunkheaded Libertines wannabes, "Don't Tell Me to Do the Math(s)" imagines bookworms gone wild, spewing potential MySpace quotes: "Don't read Jane Eyre!" or the too-clever "I will throw you high-fives if you keep your own secrets!" You actually don't need "Clunk-Rewind-Clunk-Play-Clunk"-- a tease with more shouts, glockenspiels, and vitamin-gobbling guitar hooks, but, most importantly for this paragraph, no real lyrics.

"Arctic Monkeys were an end," Simon Taylor-Thomas of UK dance-rockers Klaxons told Pitchfork, suggesting the Arctics are simply the best of a knackered bunch. They may have been made huge by MySpace, but they're also an example of the UK press giving the kids what they thought the kids should want; NME editor Conor McNicholas famously described his target reader as a 17-year-old who hates being stuck in Doncaster. The promise of the internet, however, is that no one is stuck. Los Campesinos! came up worshiping bands from America and Canada, and young people as far away as Chicago have posted YouTube videos of themselves dancing to "You! Me! Dancing!" As the song comes apart, like a roomful of revelers when the lights go on, Gareth falls into a speaking voice that recalls Scotland's Ballboy: "We're undeveloped, we're ignorant, we're stupid, but we're happy." And if your friends don't dance, then they ain't no friends of mine.